[PATCH v8 17/24] tools/docs,scripts: sphinx-*: prevent sphinx-build crashes

Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2025-09-18T11:55:06Z

On a properly set system, LANG and LC_ALL is always defined.
However, some distros like Debian, Gentoo and their variants
start with those undefioned.

When Sphinx tries to set a locale with:

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')

It raises an exception, making Sphinx fail. This is more likely
to happen with test containers.

Add a logic to detect and workaround such issue by setting
locale to C.

Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
---
tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper | 11 +++++++++++
tools/docs/sphinx-pre-install | 14 +++++++++++++-
2 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper b/tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper
index 0fe21b343e7a..6c2580303e8e 100755
--- a/tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper
+++ b/tools/docs/sphinx-build-wrapper
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ the newer version.
"""

import argparse
+import locale
import os
import shlex
import shutil
@@ -565,6 +566,16 @@ class SphinxBuilder:
if not sphinxdirs:
sphinxdirs = os.environ.get("SPHINXDIRS", ".")

+ #
+ # The sphinx-build tool has a bug: internally, it tries to set
+ # locale with locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ''). This causes a
+ # crash if language is not set. Detect and fix it.
+ #
+ try:
+ locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
+ except locale.Error:
+ self.env["LC_ALL"] = "C"
+
#
# sphinxdirs can be a list or a whitespace-separated string
#
diff --git a/tools/docs/sphinx-pre-install b/tools/docs/sphinx-pre-install
index d6d673b7945c..663d4e2a3f57 100755
--- a/tools/docs/sphinx-pre-install
+++ b/tools/docs/sphinx-pre-install
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ system pacage install is recommended.
"""

import argparse
+import locale
import os
import re
import subprocess
@@ -422,8 +423,19 @@ class MissingCheckers(AncillaryMethods):
"""
Gets sphinx-build version.
"""
+ env = os.environ.copy()
+
+ # The sphinx-build tool has a bug: internally, it tries to set
+ # locale with locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ''). This causes a
+ # crash if language is not set. Detect and fix it.
try:
- result = self.run([cmd, "--version"],
+ locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
+ except Exception:
+ env["LC_ALL"] = "C"
+ env["LANG"] = "C"
+
+ try:
+ result = self.run([cmd, "--version"], env=env,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
text=True, check=True)
--
2.51.0